Golf Industry Case Essay

It is unknown when the game of golf originated, but it is believed that people began playing in Europe during the middle ages. In the United States, golf was a sport primarily played by the wealthy individuals until tournaments began being televised. Since then, golf has grown to be a very lucrative industry with over 27 million golfers nationwide by the end of the 1990’s. “Competition in the Golf Equipment Industry,” a case study written by John E. Gamble of the University of South Alabama, is an overview of the problems currently facing major companies in the golf equipment industry: technological limitations (due to golf’s governing organizations), a decline in the number of golfers,

Socially, what is working for Prince Sports is that the interest in the sport is increasing. As more and more people look to physical activities to improve their health, tennis is an affordable option. The social downside Prince Sports is facing is some of the preconceived notions regarding tennis. Some view tennis as being a challenge to learn and that is only a fad, where interest will fade and be replaced with the next newer fad. Two economic pluses for Prince Sports is the affordability when compared to other individual sports such as golf and the availability of public and club tennis courts. The economic downside is competition entering the market and recessionary spending may limit the ability to purchase more expensive tennis equipment. Technologically speaking, Prince Sports is very innovative when it comes to their equipment, the downside is that the average tennis enthusiast may not appreciate or understand the innovation and fail to make related purchases. Prince Sports, while an industry leader, faces competition from other equipment providers as well as other individual recreation sports, such as golf. The last environmental force facing Prince Sports is the regulatory impact. While Prince Sports works to protect their

The golf industry is a competitive industry. It is especially competitive for Islington Golf Club. Islington has a lot of competition, 30 other courses within a 30 minute drive from Toronto and several located within 5-10 minutes. Many of the courses located close to Islington Golf Club have recently undergone renovations or have more amenities to offer members. These factors make it hard for Islington to get new members because they do not have the extra money for renovations and upgrades.

Old models take a large percentage of companys inventory what creates unnecessary costs. CGC should move these models to new markets that recently adopted Golf as a sport.

The partners must do additional analysis prior to determining if they should invest in a new miniature golf venture in Golden City. Before establishing marketing objectives, advertising and promotional programs, plans for addressing demand fluctuations and considering alternate locations, they must determine if they can generate sufficient sales to fund operations. They have done market research which provides a good baseline for establishing the demand, course capacity and anticipated costs. Once they have analysed this data and established that the business is financially viable, they can address advertising, demand and location questions by developing a marketing strategy.

According to the porter's typology of corporate strategy (Richard, 2009). Suggests that corporate strategies can be categorized on two dimensions, based on whether the firm is seeking to be the low-cost producer of standards products or whether it is attempting to differentiate itself by having unique products or services. And the multi product case is not a competitive environmental one cause it shows that people who want the product will generally be willing to pay what it takes to get it and it will have a fixed volume and fixed price and nobody else will be able to manufacture a similar club, due to the patent protection. So the

3M’s Sports and Leisure Products business unit took an existing technology, 3M’s “micro-replication” and applied it to a golf glove. 3M has enjoyed great success from combining the “micro-replication” with high quality Cabretta sheep leather to create a high quality golfing glove that is second to none being offered on the market. Since the introduction of the 3M Greptile Grip golf glove there has been a large influx of competitors who offer a similar technology in the golf market. Although the global market for golf gloves is estimated at $300 million with 60 percent or $180 million in the United States. The problem is

Golf ball manufacturers would be looking to achieve several key strategic goals, such as increased sales, increased market share and / or increased profitability, to adopt and implement PI’s technology. Accordingly, manufacturers are mainly concerned with the cost and implications on manufacturing, competitor reactions (and customer perception), the forecast growth in the new balls market, the share they could capture and the financial details of agreement.

The U.S. Golf Association (USGA) specified the characteristics of legal balls within tight parameters. These restrictions on size, weight, materials, texture, etc., seemingly left little room for product innovation. In fact, the USGA regulations specified not just what went into a ball, but how it could perform, stipulating to within 10-20 yards how far the ball could travel when hit by a certain type of club traveling at a certain speed, all verified under controlled conditions with robotic testing equipment. Nonetheless, new product introductions were rampant in the industry, with slight changes in surface coatings and dimple patterns, for example, being touted for their ability to add a handful of yards to a golfer’s shots, to give more accuracy, or to create greater control through faster spin on the ball. In addition, ball manufacturers spent millions of dollars on advertising campaigns for their balls. There were three basic types of balls, all conforming to the same general specifications. The oldest technology still in use was the three-piece ball, which consisted of a core, windings, and a cover; this ball was good for spin and overall control. The second, and most popular, type of ball was the twopiece ball, which eliminated the windings of the three-piece ball; this ball produced more distance. The newest technology was the “solid core, multi-layered ball,” which had taken the

New golfers increased from 1.5 million to 3 million between 1988 and 1998, but most of them quit due to increased cost of playing which went up by nearly 50%, unavailability of courses and time involved in playing. The global premium equipment market declined post 1998 due to various reasons like decreased demand, Asian economic turmoil and saturation of product in the market place. To CGC’s benefit the competition on golf equipment

Callaway Golf Company is considered a leader of the golf equipment industry through its development of technologically advanced golf clubs that compensated for the most amateur players with poor swings and helping them achieve a better golf game with the introduction of Big Bertha in 1990 and launched Callaway Golf Company forward at great speed into notoriety of the golfing community (Gamble, 2000). This analysis will thoroughly dive into the many parts of the case of the Callaway Golf Company.

With the product differentiation being one key to Callaway’s success, the next focused on the consumer knowledge of the piece of equipment. New technology is good for the golfing community, but if no golfer is aware of the product or how to use it to its fullest potential, the customer will quickly become dissatisfied. The CGC used television, golf magazines, trade publications, and word of mouth as its primary forms of advertising. The company also endorsed professional golfers on all five major tours (PGA, LPGA, Senior PGA, European PGA, and NIKE) as a vehicle to promote its products. CGC used these professional endorsements more as a validation of the effectiveness of the product in its marketing campaign.

The decision for an individual manufacturer to adopt PI’s technology will be determined by the potential increase in sales as golfers replace performance degraded balls with their brand. It is reasonable to assume that individual manufacturers are hesitant to pioneer this technology because there is no assurance that a performance degraded golf ball would be replaced with their own. The data indicate that golfers are comfortable using used balls, or value brands. By removing approximately 50% of the used balls from circulation, numerous golfers may utilize the lower cost alternatives to fulfill their required quantities.

Since we have allowed the customer to personalize their order online we are going to use mass customization for the online orders only. We will decide the inventory that will be on hand for the store fronts and those will continue to be manufactured when the order form is ready to be filed out for that store. Mass customization production can give us an advantage over our competitors because you can select what you want and we will produce it and ship it right to your house. Since we only have two Tomorrows’ Golf stores we are expecting most of the sales we do to be online orders. Since Dick’s and Golf Galaxy will carry some of our products sales will be coming from both their stores and online orders that are transferred to us.

We are pleased to say we more than always get positive feed back. When an error does come up in our system we justify it as quickly as possible for it never to happen again.